Books

08/13/2011

Ayn Rand; Author of the popular book Atlas Shrugged, wrote a chapter on the requirement for every individual to employ their judgment. Further, she identifies the moral responsibility to extol and inculcate moral standards on society to each and every individual through pronouncing their judgments. I don't idolize Rand as many other Libertarians are prone to do but because they do, and because I criticize Libertarians for their absolute abandonment of moral behavioral requirements (aside from not directly interfering with one another), I thought I should highlight her position on socially moral standards and the need for projection on society of those standards. I do consider her works to be an important contribution to the discussion on forms of government as a testimonial but her perception is biased by a life spent under a government rife with centralized power's greatest abuses.

One of her hardest positions is on the issue of reason and much of society's tendency to evade their responsibility to reason out their decisions, actions and behavior, yet she routinely evades reconsideration of the God question since she was twelve. When challenged with her use of the term God bless you, she claims to value the expression as a sentiment but not as an actual communication with a higher being. Yet she is clear on the personal responsibility each of us must accept and act upon to preserve our culture and society in a functioning, healthy, (self empowered) existence. This society, and to my personal shame, even the sub-culture self identified as the standard bearers have failed their God-given role of defenders of reason, and not just reason but the fruit of reason which is the justification of faith, to articulate morality's benefits, to make knowledge acceptable, to make righteous living desirable, and to make God obvious as the Author of it all.

This chapter is well worth the read.

Moral Judgment

One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment. Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man's character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism. The idea that one must never pass moral judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil. It is obvious who profits and who loses by such a precept. It is not justice or equal treatment that you grant to men when you abstain equally from praising men's virtues and from condemning men's vices. When your impartial attitude declares in effect that neither the good nor the evil can expect anything from you, whom do you betray and whom do you encourage? But to pronounce moral judgment is an enormous responsibility. To be a judge, one must possess and unimpeachable character. One need not be omniscient or infallible, and it is not an issue of airs of knowledge. One needs an unbreeched integrity, that is the absence of any indulgence in conscious willful evil. Just as a judge in a court of law may err the when evidence is inconclusive, but may not evade the evidence available, nor accept bribes, nor allow any personal feeling, emotion, desire, or fear to obstruct his mind's judgment on the facts and reality, so every rational person must maintain an equally strict and solemn integrity in the courtroom within his own mind where the responsibility is more awesome than in the public tribunal because he, the judge, is the only one to know when he has been impeached.

There is, however a court of appeals from one's judgments - objective reality. A judge puts himself on trial every time he pronounces a verdict. It is only in today's reign of amoral cynicism, subjectivism and hooliganism that men may imagine themselves free to utter any sort of irrational judgment and to suffer no consequences, but in fact a man is to be judged by the judgments he pronounces. The things which he condemns or extols exists in objective reality and are open to the independent appraisal of others. It is his own moral character and standards that he reveals when he blames or praises. If he condemns America and extols Soviet Russia, or if he attacks businessmen and defends juvenile delinquents, or if he denounces a great work of art and praises trash, it is the nature of his own soul that he confesses.

It is their fear of this responsibility that prompts most people to adopt an attitude of indiscriminate moral neutrality. It is the fear best expressed in the precept "judge not that ye be not judged." But that precept in fact, is an abdication of moral responsibility. It is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for one's self.

There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices. So long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values. So long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims. The moral principal to adopt in this issue is "Judge and be prepared to be judged." The opposite of moral neutrality is not a blind arbitrary self righteous condemnation of any idea, action or person that does not fit one's mood, one's memorized slogans, or one's snap judgment of the moment. Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites, they are two variants of the same evasion. To declare everybody is white or everybody is black, or everybody is neither black nor white but gray, is not a moral judgment but an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment. To judge means, "to evaluate a given concrete by reference to an abstract principal or standard." It is not an easy task. It is not a task that can be performed automatically by one's feelings, instincts or hunches. It is a task that requires the most precise, the most exacting, the most ruthlessly objective and rational process of thought. It is fairly easy to grasp abstract moral principals. It can be very difficult to apply them to a given situation, particularly when it involves the moral character of another person. When one pronounce moral judgment whether in praise or in blame, one must be prepared to answer why and to prove one's case to one's self and to any rational enquirer. The policy of always pronouncing moral judgment does not mean that one must regard one's self as a missionary charged with the responsibility of saving everyone's soul nor that one must give unsolicited moral appraisals to all those one meets. It means (a) that one must know clearly in full verbally identified form one's own moral evaluation of every person, issue, and event with which one deals and act accordingly, (b) that one must make one's moral evaluation available to others when it is rationally appropriate to do so.

This last means that one need not launch into unprovoked moral denunciations or debate, but that one must speak up in situations where silence can objectively be taken to mean agreement with or sanction of evil. When one deals with irrational persons where argument is futile, a mere "I don't agree with you" is sufficient to negate any implication of moral sanction. When one deals with better people, a full statement of one's views may be morally required, but in no case and in no situation may one permit one's own values to be attacked or denounced and to keep silent. Moral values are the motive power of man's actions. By pronouncing moral judgments one protects the clarity of ones own perception and the rationality of the course one chooses to pursue. It makes a difference whether one thinks that one is dealing with human errors or knowledge or with human evil. Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor in dread of discovering that those they deal with, their loved ones or friends or business associates or political rulers are not merely mistaken but evil. Observe that this dread leads them to sanction, to help, and to spread the evil who's very existence they fear to acknowledge. If people did not indulge in the abject evasions as to claim that some contemptible liar means well, that a mooching bum can't help it, that a juvenile delinquent needs love, that a criminal doesn't know any better, that a power seeking politician is moved by patriotic concern for the public good, that communists are merely agrarian reformers, the history of the past few decades or centuries would have been different. An irrational society is a society of moral cowards, of men paralyzed by the loss of moral standards, principals and goals. But since man have to act so long as they live, such a society is ready to be taken over by anyone willing to set it's direction. The initiative can come from only two types of men. Either from the man who is willing to assume the responsibility of asserting rational values, or from the thug who's not troubled by questions of responsibility.